The Auto Driver

I woke up to another scorching day in Delhi, harsh sunlight screaming through the door and the hot, sultry wind killing what little calm I had in me. After finishing my daily chores, packing my lunch, filling water in the cooler, I got ready for work.
“Off to office in this sweltering heat,” I spoke out loud.
Now, anyone who has lived in Delhi and uses public transport would know there is a strange section of people called auto drivers. They have the magical ability to make even Gandhi violent.
I have had my share of such creatures on a regular basis and a day doesn’t go when I don’t have to negotiate the fares with them. “Meter se chalo:” That’s my mantra. “Meter nahin chalta”: That’s their mantra. (Surprisingly their meter is working fine since the auto fares have been increased).
Now I can go on and on about these Devil’s gift to mankind. And believe me, there is a lot I can say about them. But this is not my story.

***

The auto driver waited near the small lane, as the hot wind blew around him. He felt too lazy to go towards the main road, where he would probably get more passengers. But he just sat in his auto, smiling wistfully as he saw the busy shopaholics passing by. He noticed a girl walking fast and carrying a big bag, two bags actually, deftly manouvering her umbrella, her mobile phone and a packet of mangoes.
“Auto! ITO?” I shouted?
He nodded. We negotiated, luckily he agreed on a decent fare and we started. Now there are some auto drivers who like to talk. This was one of them.
As we gave our expert opinions on the latest fare increase, he asked, “How much do you get in office?”
I was a little taken aback. “Rs 20,000,” I lied for some reason. Maybe to justify the fact that I am a poor girl and therefore cannot pay the new exorbitant fares. “Savings per month?” he asked.
“Around Rs 5,000, on a good month,” I said.
“How much have you studied?” he seemed interested.
“Well, I have done my M.A.” I said, not sure where was this going.
As I said that, he turned to me and smiled proudly: “That’s good, very good. People who let daughters go for higher education are good people.”
I smiled and said, “I am an only child, but yes, my parents are good people.”
Now, I work for a business daily, I am surrounded by news about investments, expenditure, revenues blah blah blah. And blah. But here in front of me, readers, was a budding entrepreneur. And for the next 20 minutes, as we passed Lodhi Road, Pandara Road, India Gate and proceeded towards Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, the Auto Driver chose to share his grand business plan with me.
“Beti, I have three sons,” he said proudly. “The elder one is doing his MSc in Chemistry, the second one is doing BA in Physics and the youngest one is in 11th class and he will study Math.”
I nodded, impressed at his studious sons. (I sucked at all three subjects).
He continued. “After finishing his MSc, the elder one will take tuition classes for a couple of years, till the other two brothers finish their studies. The money won’t be much, teaching doesn’t really pay that well. Look, how much you are saving in spite of being so educated.”
I nodded again, sad at the unpleasant truth.
“So!” he beamed, “You know what my plan is? I will open a Coaching Centre!” he shouted over the traffic horns.
“My elder boy will teach Chemistry, the second one Physics and the youngest boy will teach Math. Physics, Chemistry, Math!
“Then if we get up to 100 students also, we will have a decent income. Of course, there will be salaries for the receptionist, one or two other employees, bills and taxes. But still we will earn up to 20 lakh per month!
“The revenues will be divided into three equal halves among my three sons, after all they are teaching one subject each. That way there won’t be any conflict between them.
“Then I will make my own house, I will stop driving this auto, gradually we will earn in crores and we will be Rich!”
I was totally engrossed in his plans. I like people who plan their finances well. And he explained everything so systematically. But we had arrived at my stop and so I wished him all the best and left. I think he was still saying something.
There are times you meet interesting people, who may not say anything new, but you still remember them. He was one of those guys. After all, everything starts with a dream, doesn’t it? I smiled to myself and walked inside the office, as the cool wind of the AC greeted me.
But this is not my story.

***

The Auto Driver saw the girl with the bags rushing inside the big building. He again had that wistful smile back. He started his auto and started towards his house as his shift ended for the day. He thought, “She seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. Nowadays kids don’t have time for anything. I wish I had a daughter… Or three sons.”

The End


** The last paragraph was a figment of my imagination. I really hope for the Auto Driver’s sake that what all he said was true and his dreams do come true.**

GRE GRRRRRRRRR

Ok. So I have thought of sitting for GRE. Graduate Record Examination. AAAAAAAAAA....
At the ripe old age of 26, I have to sit for another exam????? Why God Why??? What the heaven is Thy problem, O Lord?? I soooo try to find some stability in my life and You have made it a mission to keep shaking me up. Man plans, God laughs. Hah! I mean, didn't I work hard enough to reach my goals, to pursue my dream, sacrifice enough to build this career? Nobody gave me this on a platter. For my M.A., I used to study in the bus while going to office, in the bathroom at night so that my roomies were not disturbed, attended classes early morning and then went to office every Sunday, wrote those pages and pages of assignments... and I finally finished my Masters. My goal. But now that I am going to enter another uncertain period in my life, i have to go through this all over again! *groan*
But I need to have a back up plan. If i don't get a job in case I move with A to the US, then I can at least study with these scores. Provided I get good ones. OK now, focus Rimli. Since I have to write the exam, I thought I should start preparing now. So I went to a book shop today.
The first big step was buying a guide book, coz God help me, i really need some guidance. It is a big fat Barron's guide book, with a CD, and no matter how put off I was, it is still a new book and that brought a smile to my face! In all my enthusiasm, the next step was to write my name on the book, like i always do (wow, i just realised i really need to brand everything. i am not a control freak, i am not a control freak. Really.) Anyway, after writing my beautiful name in my beautiful handwriting, i started to scan the contents. Drum rollllllllllll Bang! :-O *I am feeling very overwhelmed*. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. So i told myself again what an awesome person i am and that there is nothing i cannot do if i set my mind once. And with that i took the final and most important step ---(). Did i hear someone say "Study"? No silly, i made a time table. Making a time table is the most indispensible part of doing anything successfully. You write the time and the chores, and promise yourself that you will follow it. So i made an elaborate routine and i hope it doesn't go kaput like my elaborate meditation plans. Ommmmmmmmmm........
Well, I will start studying tomorrow onwards, let's see what happens, studying Math after a decade. I don't know what will be my results. But YOU. Mr/Ms God. You have somehow given me an unbearable amount of mental strength--so I will give my 100%. I work best when someone challenges or dares me to do something. So I challenge myself---life, you are daring me to ace GRE? Wait and watch.

The Legacy of Debendra Nath Das

He was my grandfather. When a person whom you have known all your life dies, there are so many memories and things to write about him that you don’t know where to start. I am not very good at dealing with death, I guess no one is, but since I don’t talk about it, it consumes me from inside. But I thought of writing about Dadu today.

On February 13, 2010, we would have celebrated his 93rd birthday. Will any one of us live so long? Almost a century. Would we want to live so long? Was it worth it, for him? He lived long enough to see his son die, his wife die. I am digressing as usual. Like I said, I am not good at dealing with death. But this is a tribute to him, not a judgment on his life.

Speaking of his long life, the first thing that comes to my mind is the fact that he was a very disciplined man---yoga exercises every morning, meals at proper timings, right amount and variety, he had a very healthy lifestyle. I wish I could follow even a fraction of it. Well, Rima and I would groan every time he would make us walk instead of taking a rickshaw or bus. But we had a gala time when Thamma and Dadu took us to Shillong. I don’t remember much of that trip, I think I was in class 2, or maybe bigger. But I do remember I had fun, we visited lots of places. And we walked a lot!

Another hobby of his was gardening. He would walk kilometres and kilometres to get saplings from there, seeds from there and with strange interesting looking tools, he would turn the backyard of our RBI quarter into Farmville! I felt like Alice in Wonderland in that little farm of ours. You know, when you are young, everything seems to be so big, so all the fruit trees seemed gigantic---mango, coconut, guava, banana, jackfruit, and vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes, three types of chilly and the intoxicating lemon trees, cucumber, melons, gourds, the lovely carrots with the fern-like leaves, radishes, turnips, brinjal, beans, ladies finger, spinach, mint… oh I could go on and on. He didn’t grow flowers, he thought it was useless and not productive to waste space on something that only looks pretty. Well, he was practical. I remember the midnight snail hunts we went on together--- I would hold the torch and he had a sack of rock salt (Yo Supernatural!) , and then we would smother the poor snails with salt and find them dead next morning. I felt a little bad, but they were destroying the crops and I hated the crunching sound of snail shells breaking under my shoes! Making the fence with him was another fun job, we would break the bamboo and cut and slit them and since I had soft hands, my job was just to tie them up, he did the cutting part! Those were the days when I found creepy crawly worms fascinating. Oh my beautiful garden, I could get lost there forever.

Now everyone who knows me knows that I love photography. I am always the girl with the camera. It’s my way of holding on to a moment, everything seems to slip away from my hands and I try so hard to hold something, I fear I will forget it, so I have to capture it. Now, Dadu had a salary of Rs 20 back in 1930s but he loved photography too. So he bought a camera for Rs 75! Way to go Dadu! You know, those cameras where you sort of have to look through from above coz the lens is on top and you rotate this thing, like you see in old movies. I had it with me since a long time. But I think it’s been misplaced.

Speaking of cameras, another prized possession of his was his binoculars. Very good quality, one of my uncles gave him that. I loved those binoculars. I would spend hours lying on the terrace staring at the stars and searching for constellations. One of the most happiest moments of my life. I also loved his watch, which he had been wearing since decades, with his initials engraved on it. Ma has kept it for me, I will treasure it forever.

Travelling. He loved that. Thamma and Dadu saw a lot of places. Those were the days when you had to carry air pillows. ‘hold-all’, ‘bedding’ etc and travel in trains for days, and with three boys it must have been tough. But he saw some amazing places, and has the photos to prove that. My father and my uncles looking dashing in their blazers and caps and boots. Even when he was ‘old’, Thamma and Dadu went to Badrinath and Kedarnath and other places together. A story he always used to say was how another elderly couple sat in the tourist bus somewhere in the midst of the majestic Himalayas and the hubby would tell his wife: ‘Sharod dekho, ki drisshyo’ (Sharod see, what a scenery!).

Speaking of stories, another oft-repeated story was, of course, the ‘dhutra ful’ story, I don’t know what that wild flower is called in English, but it's only edible if u cook it. However, in Kaziranga or some other national park, an elephant ate that flower and ran amok and scared everyone. He would tell me this story again and again… although I was a kid then, that was one of the first times I realised that he was getting old, because he never remembered that he had told the story already. Old or not, he loved ‘Knight Rider’, and whenever David Hasselhoff would come running in the beaches on Baywatch he would point and say ‘Knight Rider’ every time. And call Salman Khan ‘Solmon’ haha. Teaching him Assamese was fun too, he loved it when Rima and I used to explain him the meanings. His fav word was ‘bhori’(leg), he said ‘puro body’r bhor ne pa gulo’ (The legs take the pressure/weight of the entire body), I had never thought of it that way before. ‘Athuwa’ (mosquito net) and buka (mud) he found fascinating. But I think Thamma spoke in Assamese more. He just learnt it, but felt more comfortable in Bengali. He would tell stories of pre-partition days, about our ancestral house in Silchar and also about places which are in Bangladesh now. How they just had to sit in a boat and cross the river to come to what is now India, how borders came up within someone’s land, compound. Fortunately, he had settled and had a steady job in a tea corporation in Assam before Partition so didn’t have to face the horrors, but he grew nostalgic talking about the places he went as a child, people he would never see, and people whom we have never seen.

When u have a tough life, with so many people dependent on you, you tend to be very economical. And money management is something I learnt from my father, who I think learnt it from Dadu. They were both so organized and planned so well, and it had been engrained in me since my childhood, when I was given Rs 2 as pocket money in nursery. Dadu gave me Rs 2,000 for my first NSC of Rs 5,000, which will mature this year, I will give a part of it to the poor in his name, and the rest I will invest again in his name! I think no matter how much you earn you can always spend (obviously), save and invest some amount and I subconsciously picked it from him. And I thank him for that.

You know, there are so many things I can say, I keep remembering this and that. But these memories will stay with me forever. I guess that’s what legacy is all about. He was not perfect, but there are some things about him which will continue to live even though he is no longer here. The last time I met him he was a withered old man, battling the cold like it’s the hardest thing in the world. My last words to him were almost the same as what I had told my father when I saw him last: “Don’t worry, everything will be alright”. Well things didn’t turn out alright but for one moment if they found peace in those words I would be happy. That day, we saw old pictures of Dadu and others, when he was a young man, self-reliant and strong, and that’s how I would like to remember him. He is grand, he is my grandfather.